My piece about single customer accounts seems to have gone down quite well in most parts. My focus in the last year has mostly been on people and capability stuff, and before that on some of the trickier IT problems facing councils. It’s great that my current work in Lambeth is giving me the chance to revisit the ‘digital experience’ and challenge my thinking a bit: https://sensibletech.co.uk/should-you-develop-a-single-customer-account/

There’s lots of very good stuff in here from Coté: “Waiting for the close of open – how long can the 2000s spirit of open source and open APIs last?” https://cote.io/2023/07/21/waiting-for-the.html

“How Signal Walks the Line Between Anarchism and Pragmatism” https://www.wired.com/story/signal-politics-software-criticism/

“Delivery Needs a Strategy” https://jdosreme.medium.com/delivery-needs-a-strategy-94ef09954f36 (also why oh why do people still publish on Medium?)

Elon Musk has already had a company called X. It merged with PayPay in 2000, and then within months the PayPal people got sick of what a terrible guy he was to work with, and sidelined him. I dare say rebranding Twitter is the first step in what Musk hopes will be his great ‘I told you I was right’ project. He’s re-opening a 23 year old wound. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66284304

“Inside 4chan’s Top-Secret Moderation Machine” https://www.wired.com/story/4chan-moderation-buffalo-shooting/ (I wanted to read this so much I actually subscribed to Wired’s online edition for the privilege!)

I wrote about why I don’t think single user accounts are a good thing for local councils: https://sensibletech.co.uk/should-you-develop-a-single-customer-account/ – also sent as a newsletter https://www.davebriggs.email/p/daveslist-volume-3-issue-5

Matt ‘Jukesie’ Jukes is looking for work. You should hire him! https://digitalbydefault.com/2023/07/20/whats-next/

I keep seeing this image popping up in various online places, and it sums up exactly where a lot of local gov is when it comes to Ai, machine learning etc:

“Better government tech starts with people. New Jersey shows how” https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/06/13/new-jersey-digital-unemployment-insurance/

Love this quote from the above article: “smart digital investments must start with people”.

“This is my new thing after five years of talking with large companies about digital transformation: it just takes a long time.” https://mastodon.social/@cote@social.lol/110751957148905976

Delighted to see another local gov blog launching today! https://warwickdc.localgov.blog/

Some lovely stuff in here: https://waxy.org/2023/07/vote-on-the-tiny-awards/

Maddening but brilliant, like a reverse Tetris: https://vividfax.itch.io/fudge

Another newsletter went out today: https://www.davebriggs.email/p/daveslist-volume-3-issue-4

“Teaching agility, not Agile™” https://medium.com/@rchatley/teaching-agility-not-agile-a69ed6644682

Ooooooh: “Open Working 101” https://medium.com/we-are-cast/open-working-101-f8fa10385061

Daughter was telling me this morning about dog and cat based ASMR videos, and I said I really don’t think that was what TBL had in mind when he invented the web and she said dad, you’re so old.

Ben Unsworth, talking about digital transformation in local government. What’s not to like? https://open.spotify.com/episode/5dwqlqSqoRlZ1zJiB8xr9t

Stockport Council asks “How can we use data to help support people to leave hospital when safe and appropriate to do so?” https://www.digitalstockport.info/how-can-we-use-data-to-help-support-people-to-leave-hospital-when-safe-and-appropriate-to-do-so/

The Digital Inclusion Toolkit is looking for sponsors. If you can, you should: https://digitalinclusionkit.org/digital-inclusion-news/sponsor-the-digital-inclusion-toolkit/

Am stepping things up a bit with localgov.blog. Have coerced Steph Gray into helping me migrate and upgrade the whole thing, and set up a Basecamp site (still my favourite online collaboration thingy) to get all the users in one conversation to help me understand better what they need.

My Bluesky experience so far has been mostly terrible. I really don’t like the website interface – it feels like something I might have put together myself. Notifications fail to clear, and the same posts are always just there for some reason. I don’t follow enough people, is no doubt part of the problem.

It was our son’s graduation yesterday. So proud! But also, how did that happen? I’m so old!

On Saturday we watched the new Indiana Jones film. Very silly of course but it did capture some of the fun of the originals, which I was just mad keen on when I was a kid.

I used ChatGPT to build myself a simple flat file homepage to point to the various places I exist online. It’s remarkably easy to just feed it a few prompts and then tweak as necessary. Am sure I will keep fiddling, but it’s a start, and was so easy! https://www.davebriggs.xyz/

I really agree with Terence Eden on this https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2023/07/discord-is-not-documentation/ – and not just because I personally find Discord impossible to navigate!

I think this is true of a lot of online communities too – there’s that concept which was spoken about a lot 15 years ago (remember Wikipatterns? https://stewartmader.com/wikipatterns/ ), but now not so often, of online community ‘gardeners’ – people who’d tidy conversations up, retrieve and keep the good stuff where everyone could find it, and not allow knowledge to be lost or forgotten.

Viola the Bird is quite a strange thing https://artsandculture.google.com/experiment/nAEJVwNkp-FnrQ

Said this a few time this week – you can do amazing work with a good team, good culture, plenty of enthusiasm and terrible tech. With great tech and rubbish everything else, not so much.

Have made it onto Bluesky, just in time for it to die probably. But if you are there, come say hello! https://bsky.app/profile/davebriggs.bsky.social. Thanks to Jukesie for the invite code 🙂

This is good from TPX Impact – feels like we need a lot more of this kind of analysis across local gov: https://www.tpximpact.com/knowledge-hub/insights/harnessing-potential-social-housing-technology/

It’s almost like we need something kind of Gartner-esque but focusing on the technology and services providers working with local government. We ask why the same old vendors are so successful, but really, why wouldn’t they? Where’s the independent advice coming from?

A take on Twitter that is worth sharing if only for it’s remarkable length: https://www.eugenewei.com/blog/2023/7/6/how-to-blow-up-a-timeline

I’m getting some good reaction to the regular blogging here, and I think the newsletter is going alright, although it’s early days for that. What I have not done in a while is any longer, advisory type blogging, which usually gets posted over at https://sensibletech.co.uk/ – and I probably ought to do some of that soon.

Another newsletter went out this morning: https://daveslist.substack.com/p/daves-list-vol-3-issue-3

ClassicPress is WordPress like it used to be https://www.classicpress.net/

For years I lived in Evernote. This by Harry McCracken captures some of what made it great https://www.technologizer.com/2023/07/09/for-your-eyes-only-my-unedited-2013-time-magazine-story-about-evernote/

I knew vaguely of Vivian Stanshall, but I definitely know more having read this: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/jul/12/on-best-behaviour-he-was-a-joy-the-lost-archive-of-english-pop-eccentric-vivian-stanshall

I like this! “Build your own “On This Day” page for WordPress” https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2023/07/build-your-own-on-this-day-page-for-wordpress/

I had the pleasure earlier this week to speak for the first time to Doug Belshaw. I have been following Doug’s stuff online for years and always found it useful and interesting. Never actually spoken though, so it was lovely to do so. I recommend it! https://dougbelshaw.com/about/

I just can’t help myself. It’s like a sickness https://t2.social/davebriggs

Episode 2 of our daughter Jade’s podcast is out. It’s all about the job of being a social media manager at an agency. It’s good! https://shows.acast.com/the-social-sisters-podcast/episodes/episode-2-what-does-a-social-media-manager-actually-do

“Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.” https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

I’ve read more about David Foster Wallace than I have David Foster Wallace. This is a great piece: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n14/patricia-lockwood/where-be-your-jibes-now

Ben Thompson on Threads and the state of social media: https://stratechery.com/2023/threads-and-the-social-communications-map/

Just published my newsletter – a few opinions and a lot of links (and the usual photo of a daft dog) https://daveslist.substack.com/p/daves-list-vol-3-issue-2

“Reviewing the Local Digital Declaration 5 years on: Update on the discovery project” https://dluhcdigital.blog.gov.uk/2023/07/03/reviewing-the-local-digital-declaration-5-years-on-update-on-the-discovery-project/

On reflection, my honest view is that, 5 years in, councils that have signed the declaration really ought to be doing an awful lot more of the things they signed up to do. The declaration’s content is fine. It just needs to be acted on.

Here’s a council that actually is acting on the declaration: “Establishing an Agile Delivery Management Community” https://servicetransformation.blog.essex.gov.uk/2023/07/07/establishing-an-agile-delivery-management-community/

This is one of those articles that goes after a sacred cow or two, and is pretty excorciating in places. I don’t agree with much of it, but it sure is a useful challenge: “Beware the Digital Whiteboard” https://www.wired.com/story/beware-the-digital-whiteboard/

Such a good job going at such a good council: https://ats-adurworthing.jgp.co.uk/vacancies/244465?ga_client_id=d7e337cd-2454-49b5-9dc7-3ef60845d457

Some lovely reflections from Lloyd: “What was all that about then?” https://perfectpath.co.uk/2023/07/10/what-was-all-that-about-then/

A decision I made when I took my current gig at Lambeth was just to do 4 days a week, so I had a day a week to pootle about doing other things. The first of those days is today and ngl it feels a bit odd!

I was around when this idea was first being mooted, and it’s brill to see it live. It’s a genuine digital age capability that can be slotted into many a service, making life easier for service users as well as making the back office a bit more efficient. What’s not to like? https://www.madetech.com/blog/evidence-saas-product/

I love this definition of ‘legacy’ from Coté: “Software you need to change, but are afraid to change” https://newsletter.cote.io/p/how-to-use-chatgpt-at-schools-to-help-students

“10 years on – what’s changed for the 21st Century Public Servant?” https://21stcenturypublicservant.wordpress.com/2023/07/06/updating-the-21st-century-public-servant/

“Perhaps we’ve been wrong to frame public service digital as a way to save money” https://jasonkitcat.com/2023/07/07/perhaps-weve-been-wrong-to-frame-public-service-digital-as-a-way-to-save-money/

For a few years now, I have been advising councils not to seek savings through digital work, but to use digital to make the savings they were demanding from their services anyway tolerable for their service users and staff.

This means being more creative about how to fund digital work, beyond simple invest to save capital spend.